we love jordan!

the title of this post sums up our feelings about this country, its people and its sites. we would love to stay here much longer, but our time in the middle east is quickly waning and we have a lot more places to visit.

why, you might ask, do kylie and marc have only one measely picture on this post, amidst a blog known for its photographic largesse? let me tell you why... we brought our camera to a kodak shop today to burn our pictures onto a DVD and though the camera was working when we brought it into the shop, as soon as the employee plugged it into his reader it started sending error messages. now our memory card is corrupted and cant be read by any immediately handy source. this means that all our pictures from egypt, israel and jordan (including and most achingly petra) are currently GONE!! we tried for an hour to retrieve them, but the photo guy didnt speak english and our efforts proved futile and EXTREMELY frustrating. we cut our loses, bought a new memory card and walked out shaking. luckily we have our personal tech mavens darren s. and lowell on the case, and the memory card is being fedexed home for them to work their magic.

one the bright side, when we returned to our hotel, shaken and depressed, i opened our email to find a plethora of messages (we love communication). we found out that in addition to our known mkginbc afficianodos, friends and family theresa p., pam d. and nathan g. all read our blog. yaaay! thanks guys, knowing that really lifted my spirits. if any other readers (tuscaloosa alabama anyone?) want to comment and let us know that they are out there, rest assured that my spirits could still use further lifting.

anyways, after that small aside with large ramifications, i will tell you a little bit about amman. it is a beautiful city replete with the ubiquitous arab hospitality we have come to love, and without the attendant hassles of egypt. the argilaah (aka sheesha aka hookah aka water pipe) is smooth and the juice and baklava and falafels are cheap. you may remember amman from your old testament readings (nathan your dad could help us out here) as the capital of the ammonites mentioned numerously in numbers and dutifully in deuteronomy, not to mention sagely in 1st and 2nd samuel (i also really wanted to type genuinely in genesis, but i won't b/c that is going too far) in passages such as:

"and the lord god said unto them, go forth and smite all the tribes east of arnor, except for the ammonites as they are the descendants of lot and verily i say unto you that they are nice guys and stoke a mean sheesha"

deuteronomy 2:19

also in numbers 21:24

"Israel, however, put him to the sword and took over his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, but only as far as the Ammonites, because their border was fortified. Upon reaching the city of Petra, Moses saith unto the Lord, "Seriously man, do you want us to march around this place seven whole times? That's a crazy dynamic hike, and I've heard these guys make kickass baklava!"

near amman is the roman city of jerash, the best preserved of the ancient decapolis. even after petra ruined ruins for us, we still managed to wonder at the splendour of ancient rome this far from home. i would love to show you some pictures we took of jerash, but we've been over that (i'm serious about comments and emails lifting my spirits here folks!) so i found a couple on the trusty interhypersuperweb.

tomorrow we head back to jerusalem if the border guards will let us. we will stay in the old city and visit a few more places before making our way up to the galilee. don't worry, we will keep you posted. ;-)